June 14, 2014

The End of The Iraqi State?

Notoriously reluctant to involve himself in security affairs, Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Shi’ite religious leader in Iraq, has
issued a call to arms today, urging everyone who is able to do so to take up arms and fight the advancing al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Sistani’s unprecedented call has seen considerable response already, as volunteers are loaded into trucks and sent northward, toward the AQI front. The Iraqi Army, by contrast, continues to drop its weapons and flee whenever approached.

Perhaps most telling was Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani’s religious
endorsement of Shiite men taking up arms to defend “their homes, their
cities and their holy places” from the Sunnis. Previously, Sistani had
rejected militia activities and urged support for the central
government, even during the darkest days of the 2006-08 sectarian war.

A
Shiite resident of Baghdad, who asked to be called Abu Zeinab, said his
neighborhood near the Shiite Shrine of Khadam in the neighborhood of
Khadamiya was filled with volunteers after Sistani’s decree became
known.

“The statement by the marja, Sistani,” he said, using an
Arabic term of respect that loosely means “object of emulation,” “has
changed everything now. It says we should fight as Shiites to protect
Shiites. I think this means there is no Iraqi state now.”

His words Friday marked a radical departure for a man who has played a
powerful hand in shaping Iraqi politics, but has typically urged Iraqi
Shiites to resist provocation to sectarian bloodshed.

And as the
most powerful religious authority in Iraq, Sistani’s words were likely
to find support among the country’s Shiites and political leaders, who
are desperate to hold on to power and have a fleet of well-trained
Shiite militias ready to act.